Under the guise of combating “woke” investing, corporate-backed House Republicans last week passed legislation that would establish a taxpayer-funded advisory board within the country’s top Wall Street regulatory agency whose sole purpose is to lobby on pro-business and corporate concerns.
The two bills — which critics say are “straight out of the Project 2025 playbook” and double as a corporate wish list for whoever wins the 2024 presidential election — would also roll back shareholder rights, make it easier for companies to hide financial risks related to climate change, and restrict local governments from investing pension funds as they deem necessary.
The legislation’s authors say they’re working to stop the so-called “woke capitalism” of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, an investing principle that encourages companies to consider diversity staffing, climate-related business practices, and other issues in their business decisions. But others say the ultimate goal of the bills is to allow companies to squash shareholder voting rights, strip away at investors’ ability to control the companies they own, potentially obscure shady business practices, and pay CEOs to lobby regulators.
“The bills would be a disastrous interference in decision-making by investors, and an ideological attack on this whole category of ESG investing, and on the investors and proxy advisers that do it,” said Timothy Smith, senior policy adviser for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a faith and values-based organization advocating for more environmentally conscious investing.
The bills come after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees the nation’s stock markets and…
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Auteur: Freddy Brewster
